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We are acting as if we have no memory. It's just pure collective amnesia that I find very worrying. In 2003 we've seen the statues of Saddam being toppled down and hailed as a big revolution. And there's a big vacuum left. And that's vacuum, that void, is left by ultranationalism or Islamism.
So what happens is a cycle of violence. One dictator goes, another dictator comes in that part of the region or this part of the region. In order to break that cycle we need to understand and focus on civil society, which means empower the disempowered, the minorities, the women, the students, understand the culture, Respect the cultures, but give them a voice. That is where I see a big, big void. And in that void, I think violence continues to thrive.
I think there was something incredibly beautiful, brave, authentic, that occurred. People with very little power, who have never tasted democracy before went out into the streets and faced guns, and in the Libyan case, immediately afterwards, had elections that were quite amazing, actually, quite incredible.
So I am, of course, crushed, and disheartened, and overwhelmed by the challenges that we are all facing. But I'm also, I think, reading between the lines of what Elif said and share with her very much. My confidence is very much in those passions that still exist, still exist.
It's very interesting to observe how the voices for democracy and the rule of law, after everything that a country like Libya has gone through, are still just as eloquent and passionate. Of course, they've been damaged. Many of them have been killed or disappeared, made to disappear. But in that I think there's something incredibly, incredibly enlightening.
We have a massive problem when it comes to gender violence, domestic violence in Turkey. It has been escalating in an alarming way. Every day three women are killed on average. In Istanbul, convention was, in a way, our last hope.
I think this idea that somehow these people are hardwired, you know not to be ... is a very insidious one.
